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"And I beheld, and heard the voice of one eagle flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice: Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth....[Apocalypse (Revelation) 8:13]

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

The Sadness of Christ by St Thomas More

The Sadness of Christ by St Thomas More

The Sadness of Christ is the last and unfinished work of St
Thomas More. He had written many works, mainly fighting the new heresies
that were rampant and were causing huge damage within Catholic Europe.
He was imprisoned in the Tower of London between April 17, 1534 to July
6, 1535, the day he was taken to the block and executed for high
treason. And what was his treason? Refusing to accept Henry VIII as the
supreme head of the Church.

It would seem ironic that St Thomas More died for supporting the
Papacy because the bishops of his day did little to oppose the various
heresies, notably the spread of Protestantism, and also because the
reigning Pope at the time badly handled the pressing issue of the day,
notably Henry VIII’s wish to divorce his lawful wife. Henry VIII’s wish
was met with silence and acquiescence by the English bishops – most were
only too compliant and signed the Oath of Supremacy – with the result
that within a few years English Catholics, while continuing with their
devotions and Mass attendance, were in fact in schism and cut themselves
off from the Roman Catholic Church.

All but one English bishop and much of the clergy in Henry VIII’s reign
took the Oath and thereby cut themselves off from the Roman Catholic
Church. The only faithful archbishop, St John Fisher, had this to say
moments before his execution: “I am come here to die for Christ’s
Catholic Church.”

St John Fisher and St Thomas More both understood that liking or not liking a Pope was not the issue; rather, recognizing the Pope as the supreme Pontiff– whether good or bad – is a Catholic teaching which can never be dispensed with.

The English Catholics were faced with two options: Face martyrdom or
hide behind blind ignorance and fear. The first was lamentable but
Catholic; the second was understandable but unCatholic.

And the executions were to continue for nearly 150 years.

St Thomas More spent the last 15 months of his life in the Tower in
quiet recollection preparing for death and writing spiritual works. The Sadness of Christ was unfinished because all writing material was taken from him and he was executed within a few days.

St Thomas More understood fallen human nature and he knew history. He
therefore had a good grasp of the seriousness of his own situation and
of that of England, and, no doubt, of that of Europe. When writing The Sadness of Christ
he was warning that the sadness which Christ experienced in the garden
of Gethsemani was going to be played out yet again: While the apostles
sleep, evil wins.

St Thomas More did not mince words. He called the high-priests who
conspired to kill Christ “bishops”. He compared the bishops of his day
to the apostles who fell asleep during Christ’s passion in the garden.
He writes: “…this similitude of apostles thus sleeping may aptly be
applied unto those bishops which lie carelessly and
sleep full sound, while virtue and true religion are like to run to
ruin… like a sort of swine wallowing in the mire, lie fast sluggish in
the dead sleep of their mischievous blind affections, as men all drowned
and drunken with the pleasant must of the devil, the flesh, and the
world” (p 56).

While the apostles – bishops – were asleep, the power of darkness and
its minions unleashed their power. St Thomas More used the words of
Christ to speak to his “own countrymen and bishops” who gave in and
co-operated with “the power of darkness”:

“In darkness be ye, while ye ascribe my death to your own strength, and
in darkness shall be your president Pilate too, as long as he shall
proudly boast that he hath authority either to quit me or crucify me,
who albeit mine own countrymen and bishops shall
deliver me into his hands, should have no power for all that upon me,
were it not given him from my Father above. And for that cause the more
is their offence that shall betake me unto him. But this is your hour
and the short power of darkness. And he that walketh in darkness wotteth
not whither he goeth” (p 103 – 104).

And so, while the bishops slept, the Faith in England was slowly extinguished. And blind ignorance was no excuse:

“So do ye neither see nor know what ye do. Therefore will I pray myself
for ye that you may have pardon for that you work against me. Yet pardon
shall ye not all attain, nor blind ignorance will not excuse you
all neither, since you are the very cause of your ignorance yourselves.
Ye put away the light yourselves, ye first pluck out both your own eyes
yourselves, and after that other men’s too, so that the blind leadeth
the blind, till ye both fall into the pit” (p 104).

The Sadness of Christ was meant to be a wake-up call for St Thomas More’s generation. Alas, only a happy few responded.

The sadness of Christ in Gethsemani is meant to be a wake-up call for every generation.

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St. Bernard:

Go forth confidently then, you knights, and repel the foes of the cross of Christ with a stalwart heart. Know that neither death nor life can separate you from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ, and in every peril repeat, "Whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's." What a glory to return in victory from such a battle! How blessed to die there as a martyr! Rejoice, brave athlete, if you live and conquer in the Lord; but glory and exult even more if you die and join your Lord. Life indeed is a fruitful thing and victory is glorious, but a holy death is more important than either. If they are blessed who die in the Lord, how much more are they who die for the Lord!

How secure, I say, is life when death is anticipated without fear; or rather when it is desired with feeling and embraced with reverence! How holy and secure this knighthood and how entirely free of the double risk run by those men who fight not for Christ! Whenever you go forth, O worldly warrior, you must fear lest the bodily death of your foe should mean your own spiritual death, or lest perhaps your body and soul together should be slain by him.

Indeed, danger or victory for a Christian depends on the dispositions of his heart and not on the fortunes of war. If he fights for a good reason, the issue of his fight can never be evil; and likewise the results can never be considered good if the reason were evil and the intentions perverse. If you happen to be killed while you are seeking only to kill another, you die a murderer. If you succeed, and by your will to overcome and to conquer you perchance kill a man, you live a murderer. Now it will not do to be a murderer, living or dead, victorious or vanquished. What an unhappy victory--to have conquered a man while yielding to vice, and to indulge in an empty glory at his fall when wrath and pride have gotten the better of you!

But what of those who kill neither in the heat of revenge nor in the swelling of pride, but simply in order to save themselves? Even this sort of victory I would not call good, since bodily death is really a lesser evil than spiritual death. The soul need not die when the body does. No, it is the soul which sins that shall die.

The knight of Christ, I say, may strike with confidence and die yet more confidently, for he serves Christ when he strikes, and serves himself when he falls. Neither does he bear the sword in vain, for he is God's minister, for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of the good. If he kills an evildoer, he is not a mankiller, but, if I may so put it, a killer of evil. He is evidently the avenger of Christ towards evildoers and he is rightly considered a defender of Christians. Should he be killed himself, we know that he has not perished, but has come safely into port.

Once he finds himself in the thick of battle, this knight sets aside his previous gentleness, as if to say, "Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord; am I not disgusted with your enemies?" These men at once fall violently upon the foe, regarding them as so many sheep. No matter how outnumbered they are, they never regard these as fierce barbarians or as awe-inspiring hordes. Nor do they presume on their own strength, but trust in the Lord of armies to grant them the victory.

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Saint Athanasius

"May God console you! ... What saddens you ... is the fact that others have occupied the churches by violence, while during this time you are on the outside. It is a fact that they have the premises – but you have the Apostolic Faith. They can occupy our churches, but they are outside the true Faith. You remain outside the places of worship, but the Faith dwells within you. Let us consider: what is more important, the place or the Faith?The true Faith, obviously. Who has lost and who has won in the struggle – the one who keeps the premises or the one who keeps the Faith? True, the premises are good when the Apostolic Faith is preached there; they are holy if everything takes place there in a holy way ..."You are the ones who are happy; you who remain within the Church by your Faith, who hold firmly to the foundations of the Faith which has come down to you from Apostolic Tradition. And if an execrable jealousy has tried to shake it on a number of occasions, it has not succeeded. They are the ones who have broken away from it in the present crisis. No one, ever, will prevail against your Faith, beloved Brothers. And we believe that God will give us our churches back some day. "Thus, the more violently they try to occupy the places of worship, the more they separate themselves from the Church. They claim that they represent the Church; but in reality, they are the ones who are expelling themselves from it and going astray. Even if Catholics faithful to Tradition are reduced to a handful, they are the ones who are the true Church of Jesus Christ."